


A New Path, A New Purpose

by banana_pattern_camo



Category: Metal Gear, Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Developing Relationship, M/M, a typical otasune fic but with added pokemon, there's only one bed, to match the one brain cell i used to write this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29025165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/banana_pattern_camo/pseuds/banana_pattern_camo
Summary: "But as David stubs out his cigarette and flicks off the bedside lamp, and they settle down, both tossing and turning a little awkwardly at first, Hal feels, strangely, at the end of a day that has arguably been one of his worst to date, a certain lightness in his chest that he's sure he's never quite felt before."MGS1 Era Otasune, set in the Pokémon universe. (though you don't need much knowledge of Pokémon to get the gist of it)
Relationships: Otacon/Solid Snake
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	A New Path, A New Purpose

**Author's Note:**

> Otasune Pokémon AU...I'm into both Metal Gear and Pokémon right now so I couldn't resist. Take this with a pinch of salt, especially the locations and the science. I've set it in the Unova region, without ever mentioning a Pokémon that's actually native to Unova?? Anyway. I haven't written any kind of fiction for literal years so even if this sucks, I kinda had fun writing it. I love Snake and Otacon with my whole heart.

\---

  
It's a cold night on the outskirts of Icirrus City, as the nights there usually are, but this one is more biting than most. The small fire in David's cottage barely provides enough warmth for one, and Hal shivers as he downs the last of his bland instant noodles and gazes at the steady fall of snow past the window. It's been a very strange kind of day. 

24 hours ago, he was still a scientist working at Team Foxhound's then current base, a huge research facility on Shadow Moses Island, off the south-west coast of Unova. 

  
When he’d first started working there, Hal had been full of enthusiasm. Holed up in a secluded place, spending all his time studying Pokémon (a fascination since he was little, not just the universal wonder of every child when given their first Pokémon, but a desire to really understand them, to understand the science) - it'd seemed like the perfect job.    
  
Too quickly, he was proven wrong; Team Foxhound’s research was far from an innocent exploration of Pokemon genetics - rather, it was the continuation of experiments dating back to the 70s, a vast project aiming to create an artificial legendary Pokemon - a man-made, living weapon.    
  
Left with no choice but to comply with the wishes of Liquid Snake, leader of Foxhound, Hal and his fellow scientists had succeeded in realising Foxhound’s aim: Metal Gear Rex - or Rex for short. A steel-armoured, bipedal beast created entirely in a lab, cobbled together using DNA stolen from various Pokemon, legendaries and otherwise; all the most dangerous characteristics spliced together to create one huge killing machine - the perfect tool by which Liquid and his cronies could bring the Unova region to its knees.   
  
Of course it had been too good to be true, he reflects moodily. His first real job as a newly graduated Pokémon scientist, and it had turned into one of the biggest events in Unova's history. And his own naivety had made him an accomplice. 

Sure, it's all over now. Rex had been captured by the mysterious Pokémon trainer Snake and handed over to the Elite Four for safekeeping, away from the now disbanded Team Foxhound's grasp; but Hal has a feeling that the guilt will stay fresh for a long time. 

Hal stretches out his arms and winces as he shifts his bad ankle. Sitting a few feet away is Snake himself, gazing blankly into the fire in a manner mirroring Hal’s. 

The bandana he’d been wearing all day has been tossed haphazardly onto the floor. Bedraggled strands of hair fall loosely across his forehead, the glow from the fire casting weird shadows across his face. 

Taking advantage of Snake - or really David, as the older man had revealed - being lost in thought, Hal rests his chin on his hand and stares across at him, finally getting a chance in the moment of pause to fully take in this strange Pokémon trainer who'd swept into Shadow Moses like a whirlwind, saving the day in a way Hal thought only some kind of overpowered video game protagonist would be able to manage.    
  
Then again, Hal reflects, David isn’t an ordinary trainer. 

Between the time of their initial meeting in the lab, the subsequent chaos, the grand finale and the journey back to David's home in Icirrus City, they'd learnt a thing or two about each other. 

(Somewhere along the way, he isn't quite sure how or when, it had been decided that Hal, now out of a job and with no other real place to go to, would stay at David's place for a while, until something was 'sorted out'. An arrangement made, he suspected, not just out of common decency but out of a strange need for both of them, a couple of self-professed loners, to have some company, a bond between them forming, perhaps, due to their shared experiences on Shadow Moses.)

Gazing out across the water from the deck of the ferry, emotions high and tense, Dave had let the secrets flow - a rare breach, Hal suspected, of the man's usually water-tight defenses.    
  
Dave, then - “ _ Hal and Dave? That’s a good one,” _ \- it turns out, is just as intertwined - far more so, in fact, than Hal - with Foxhound’s bloody history.

A result of an experiment himself - cloned from the DNA of ‘Big Boss’, the man said to be greatest Pokemon trainer of all; raised by Team Foxhound to be a ruthless trainer, a man with a perfect mixture of brutality and apathy who will wield his Pokemon as tools of battle, nothing more. 100% efficiency. The perfect trainer, in fact, who, assuming the success of certain other experiments, could one day have the most powerful Pokemon in the world under his command.    
  
That was their plan, anyway. According to Dave, he’d run away from Foxhound in his early twenties, moving to the Unova region and relying on help from his former commander, also a Foxhound deserter, to keep him hidden and keep Foxhound off his scent. 

Fast forward to the present day, when said commander, Colonel Campbell, had got wind of Team Foxhound's newly established Unova base and their goings-on, and together they'd formulated a mission to infiltrate Foxhound's base and stop them in their tracks. 

Well, Hal muses, they certainly succeeded. But Dave, it seems, had got more than he'd bargained for.

Mid-battle, Liquid had revealed himself in that infuriatingly smug voice of his to be David's twin, created from Big Boss in the same way, only raised on a different Foxhound base on the other side of the world. 

A shock to anyone, finding out you have a secret brother, but it goes deeper than that, Hal thinks. David had been vague about what he'd spent the last several years  _ doing  _ in Icirrus City, but from the various empty bottles and cig packets Hal has noticed scattered around the cottage, and the general state of disarray, to say nothing of the ridiculous amount of Mightyenas he seems to own, Hal can guess that a lot of those years Dave has spent either dwelling far too much on his personal history, or trying to forget it. Probably both. 

And with the sudden emergence of Liquid, all those festering insecurities have come rearing up again. 

Hal sighs.  _ Strange _ , he thinks to himself,  _ all my life I've been interested in Pokémon far more than people, and yet I've been thinking more about this one man in the space of a day than I ever have about anyone else.  _

But there's something about Dave, Hal ponders, and it's not just the well defined muscles showing beneath his weird sneaking-come-battle gear, or his outdated haircut that would look stupid on anyone else, or the way his grey-blue eyes are framed by long eyelashes that have no right to be so pretty, set against the rest of his rough, stubbled face. 

Appealing, of course, though that all is. 

No, there's something so intriguing about Dave, the person, and Hal is positive - as positive as he can be after knowing him for barely a day - that despite the older man's hang ups about being a product, a clone, a copy, there's no one else in all the world quite like Dave, never has been, and never will. 

At that moment, as if on cue, a loud yap from Dave's Poochyena brings an end to Hal's sentimental thought spiral, as the little pup, tussling on the rug with all of Hal's team, has its tail nipped by a playful Ekans. 

Dave, too, is snapped out of his reverie, and regards the tumbling pile of Pokémon with a twitch of his lips that Hal is beginning to recognise as equivalent to a smile. 

It's Dave who breaks the silence, clearing his throat as he gestures vaguely towards the rug, "Looks like your Pokémon have taken quite a shine to my Pooch."

Hal cracks a half-smile of his own. "Seems that way. I don't blame them though. Though I still can't believe you have  _ fifty _ Mightyenas, by the way. Fifty-one, if you include this Poochyena when it evolves."

"Hrm. Yeah well. I like 'em, is all. And I need big teams to pull my sleds," is the gruff, slightly defensive response. 

A pause while he grabs his smokes, and then, "What's the deal with Ekans anyway? Doesn't seem like your kind of Pokémon. Neither cutesy nor geeky. Just kinda...slithery."

Hal blushes. "Well, you know, actually, that Ekans used to belong to a Team Foxhound grunt on base. But uh, the guy abandoned it. Guess he thought it was too weak or something. And uh, well, I felt sorry for it. So I captured it myself."

"It belonged to Foxhound? Seems too sweet to be one of their vicious little devils."

"Well, sure, at first, it was a nightmare, really difficult to train. Attacking everything was all it had been taught to do, raised to be aggressive like all their Pokémon...and sure, it kept biting me for months, but uh- you know, over time it mellowed. Learned to be friends with other Pokémon, and all that stuff. It was pretty sad, the way it seemed so surprised when I praised it, gave it treats…..but anyway, now it's the friendliest little…. slithery thing you've ever seen."

"Huh." Snake takes a long drag on his cigarette, expression deliberately neutral as he stares at the writhing Pokémon.

A particularly loud gust of wind whistles through the silence, and Hal's eye is drawn to the clock on the mantelpiece by the window. It's half past midnight, if the faded display of the little digital clock is to be believed, and Hal suddenly remembers that he is bone-tired. 

Dave, as if having the same thoughts, stubs his cigarette and abruptly stands up, stretching out his arms. 

He turns to look at Hal, scratching the back of his head slightly sheepishly as he says, "I forgot to mention before, but there's uh, only one bed here. A double, that is, but uh, just the one. I'd offer to take the couch but - it gets pretty damn cold downstairs and the wind whistling underneath the front door kinda pisses me off. So if you're okay with sharing……?"

He tails off, still an awkwardness between them. 

If Hal wasn't so damn tired, he'd probably blush and fluster for a good five minutes and insist upon taking the couch, but as it is, the thought of a nice warm bed is too inviting to pass up, and he nods. 

Dave nods in return, flushing slightly as he realises how stupid they must look just standing there nodding at each other, and he moves to take their empty pot noodle cups to the kitchen. 

"I've gotta go check on my Mightyenas before I sleep, so you can head on up and use the bathroom and whatever first. Take some spare clothes to sleep in out of my closet, it's no bother," he calls over his shoulder. 

Hal nods again, before remembering Dave's back is turned, and gives what he hopes is a normal-sounding "Okay!" before heading up the stairs. 

-

Ten minutes later, Hal is sitting up in Dave's bed, knees drawn to his chest and trying not to take up space by getting as close to the edge as possible, as he checks on his Pokémon. 

Ekans has slithered off somewhere in the room, probably found a cardboard box or some other weird hiding place to curl up and sleep, as it often does. Porygon floats over to Hal, making weird sleepy noises as it settles down by his side. 

Hal is just placing his glasses carefully on the bedside table when Dave walks in, and he's glad of the timing, because Hal is far too tired to experience a sleepy, t-shirt and boxers clad Dave in high definition and all the subsequent feelings. 

Dave's Plusle, inexplicably the only Pokémon he seems to have which isn't a member of the Poochyena evolution line, is clinging to his arm, and curls up beside Dave as he climbs into bed. Spotting Hal's Minun across the room, it gives a tired burst of happy sparks before nodding off to sleep. 

Hal grins at that, and Dave's lips twitch in return. They stare at each other for a beat, still slightly unsure, the weirdness of the whole situation still hanging in the air. 

Dave reaches for a cigarette from the pack beside the bed, shooting Hal an apologetic look. "Habit before I sleep, sorry." 

He glances over at the Pokémon curled up by Hal's side of the bed and frowns a little. "I don't remember seeing that one playing downstairs. Was it resting in its ball?" 

"Hm? Oh, uh, yeah, that's right," answers Hal. "I didn't introduce you yet. This is Porygon."

A few sleepy chirps as it opens one eye, and Dave lifts an eyebrow. "Hey, now I come to think of it, I remember seeing a lot of the scientists back on Shadow Moses using these weird origami bird lookalikes. What's so special about 'em?" 

Hal flusters a little at the question. "Ah well, you see, Porygon was part of Foxhound's initial Pokémon experiments, right around the uh, the 70s."

A pause. David's hand stills, momentarily, before flicking his lighter. 

"Huh."

"Only, not many people know that and, uh, Porygon is used by most kinds of scientists now, anyway. Basically, it's an artificial Pokémon. Like Rex was going to be, but a lot more simplistic, a forerunner to Rex, just to see if they could. It was created in a lab, using pretty basic strings of code, designed to have specific functions."

"Designed... " Snake echoes the word, reaching to put his lighter back on the table. 

Hal fidgets, aware that this topic of conversation, not the most pleasant of bedtime chats, is on its way to undoing the more lighthearted mood of the sleepy grins they'd exchanged minutes before. 

But as he looks at Dave, all tired eyes and a quiet air of desperation around him, Hal wants to carry on, determined to find something to say that'll stop this tired, sad man looking quite so….tired and sad, even just for a second. 

"But you know, uh. If you ask me, I don't think they succeeded when they made Porygon." 

"No?" 

"No. Their aim was a simplistic Pokémon that was designed to do what they programmed it to, nothing more. But - I've had that Porygon in my party for months and - well, I've watched it playing with Ekans - weirdly those two are best friends - I've  _ seen _ it get all happy when I give it the treats it likes, heard it make these weird computer-y noises just to make Minun laugh - and, well, I can't believe it does those things because it was designed to. It plays with Ekans because it  _ wants _ to, because it developed its own desires, outgrew the basic program, carved out its own needs and whims."

David exhales a cloud of smoke, rough hand slightly tensed as he grips the cigarette. 

Hal shifts a little closer, hesitates until David turns to look at him. 

Hal takes a deep breath, and then,

"Dave," he says, "I can't possibly know what's going on inside your head, and I can't claim to know you well after just one day, crazy though the day was, but - but all the stuff about your birth, your past, your brother. The shadow of Big Boss following you, the knowledge that you were created in his image, to be - to be ruthless like him, to be someone who uses his Pokémon as tools, a mercenary, a warmonger, rather than a trainer-"

"Jeez, thanks for spelling it all out 

for me. Very poetic." 

"- _ but _ . You're more than that, Dave. I'm positive. Like Ekans, like Porygon, you were raised for a purpose, someone else's purpose, someone else's selfish design, but you're not an exact copy, a perfect program. You're unique, Dave, because no one else thinks your thoughts, feels your feelings, does all the weird little things I'm sure you do when you're not kicking ass - and even though there's some blood on your hands, Dave, it's - well, I guess I won't say you can wash it off, that's a bad analogy, because you can't erase your past, but you can let it it lie. 

God knows I've got demons of my own, stuff that I haven't told you yet, and God knows I should probably be taking my own advice that I'm giving here but - I mean it, Dave. You gotta let yourself move on, let yourself grow. Find your own purpose, a new path. What you did today proves you're not the devil incarnate that you seem to think you are. Hell, even your ridiculous amount of Mightyenas is proof that you're your own person Dave; I'm pretty sure they didn't write a "own 50 of the same Pokémon and hole yourself up in the coldest city in the region with them" gene into your DNA."

Dave snorts at that, a twitchy half smile threatening to stretch into a real one. His breath hitches almost imperceptibly, but Hal senses it.

Feeling like he's achieved his aim of dispelling the tension somewhat, Hal grins back, and bumps their shoulders together. 

For a moment, they just stare at each other, hesitantly aware of something that might just be beginning to spark into life between them, but far too unfamiliar with each other still, and too tired in this present moment, to make any acknowledgement of it. 

But as David stubs out his cigarette and flicks off the bedside lamp, and they settle down, both tossing and turning a little awkwardly at first, Hal feels, strangely, at the end of a day that has arguably been one of his worst to date, a certain lightness in his chest that he's sure he's never quite felt before.

Musing on his own words, he's not sure what kind of new purpose he's going to find for himself, now that everything has been turned upside down, but as he steals one last glimpse at Dave before he shuts his eyes, he decides to blame his sleep-deprived brain for forming the thought that, perhaps, just possibly, he's already found it. 

\----

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! ^_^  
> I don't know if this will have a second part - because that would require me to think of a plot, rather than just conversations and introspections - or even a prequel, I guess, since I massively glossed over them actually meeting.....


End file.
